Editorial: Bridging the gender gap

WINDOWS FOR WOMEN. With the Follow-on Grant from the USAID, the BCPD is accepting applicants for the Opportunity 2.0 program, which will give 110 out-of-school young women, solo mothers and women of the Badjao community one year of training in food service technology. Aside from tuition, participants receive transportation allowance and on-the-job training with Cebu City restaurants, with an opportunity for employment after completing the program. / Pexels
WINDOWS FOR WOMEN. With the Follow-on Grant from the USAID, the BCPD is accepting applicants for the Opportunity 2.0 program, which will give 110 out-of-school young women, solo mothers and women of the Badjao community one year of training in food service technology. Aside from tuition, participants receive transportation allowance and on-the-job training with Cebu City restaurants, with an opportunity for employment after completing the program. / Pexels

Norms about male and female roles may be slow to change even in the face of actualities.

Yet, it is a combination of the traditional and the new that enables the Macahilo sisters to change the course of their family.

Cladly Mae, 22, saw on the Facebook page of a nongovernment organization (NGO) an invitation to a livelihood skills training for women.

According to the June 4 report on SunStar Cebu by Cherry Ann T. Lim with the Banilad Center for Professional Development (BCPD), Cladly Mae went to register for the program, with her sisters Sheila Mae, 25, and Cherry Rose, 20, tagging along.

Seeing the two other women hovering behind Cladly Mae, BCPD director Elizabeth Lopez encouraged the three Macahilo sisters to apply with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Opportunity 2.0 program, implemented by the BCPD to train women for employment and entrepreneurship.

They are among the first batch of 79 out-of-school women who trained with the BCPD and then were either hired by the NGO’s industry partners or started their own enterprises.

After completing the curriculum requirements and training with local companies that hired them, Cladly Mae, Sheila Mae and Cherry Rose turned over their earnings to their mother Susan.

As narrated in the same SunStar Cebu article, Susan, a housewife, said that she and her husband cannot afford to send their three daughters to college, especially after he was unable to find work as a carpenter during the pandemic.

“We can now eat three times a day,” said Susan about their daughters’ achievements. Pooling the girls’ earnings, Susan settled their debts, enabling the family of seven to continue staying in the house they almost had to vacate due to unpaid rent.

Despite economic realities that sideline men and force women to step up in the labor market, 75 percent of male respondents and 80 percent of female respondents view that men should earn and support their families while women take care of the family and home.

This was a finding in a 2021 World Bank study on women’s work and childcare in the Philippines.

According to the research conducted by Nadia Belhaj Hassine Belghith, Benjamin Aaron Lavin and Hannah Frohman Lapalombara, traditional expectations of gender roles performed at home and work hold back many Filipinas from greater participation in spheres outside the home that require specialized skills and compensate the worker with a salary and other social benefits.

When a family’s resources are limited, gender can be a deciding factor in the selection of the child prioritized for formal education on the expectation that males have more opportunities to work and provide for the family.

Programs such as the USAID Opportunity 2.0 are essential for closing social disparities and empowering women, marginalized by gender and other factors causing poverty, to close the gap between their circumstances and aspirations through education, employment, and livelihood.

With little or inadequate education, a young woman may have diminished self-esteem and accept that her world has shrunk to the confines of a purely domestic existence, which makes her vulnerable to unplanned pregnancy, dependence on a partner who may abuse her lack of financial independence, human trafficking, and toxic escape through vices and addictions.

Before participating in the USAID-BCPD training, the Macahilo sisters saw themselves as timid among strangers. With her training on professional relations with customers, Cladly Mae taught herself to overcome her shyness as a service crew member of a restaurant. Her family motivates her to take on challenges at work.

Bolstered that she has innate talents and abilities to help herself and her family, a woman can break free from the mindset of powerlessness and dependence imposed by gender stereotypes and social biases.

Education, employment and entrepreneurship are keys opening many doors for women, their families and communities.

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